Slipping Away

                                                          SLIPPING AWAY

 

        The lady in the wheelchair raised her arms over her head “ Lord, wash the blood of my brothers and sisters from my body! Cleans me from the sins of my fellow man and forgive me for the lives I take in saving my own! I welcome your judgment what ever it may be and when ever it is visited upon me but I beg you, rid me of this blood!”

   Blood poured from their bodies and ran down the clacking escalator. They reached the top with a jolt and Charlie shoved them off. The chair rolled forward. The umbrella reappeared and whipped open. They lingered for a moment relishing the purifying torrent. Charlie lowered his head in exhaustion.

   “Wake up, suitcase boy and get your ass in gear if you want to live!” He looked up to see the wheelchair sailing off into the darkness. He grabbed the suitcase and bolted after her.

   “Your chair was electric all along?”, He yelled as he loped alongside her. “Why didn’t you use it?”

   “It wasn’t working! All the blood and guts probably clogged it. I wouldn’t complain. We have a few blocks to go and God knows how much time left. You wouldn’t want to push me.”

   “Where are we going?”

   “To the waterfront! Help will be there!”

   The wind had picked up and the rain was torrential. There was no one on the street, no one alive that is. They dodged more than a few bodies on the sidewalk and passed several wrecked and shot up cars as they scurried beneath smoking buildings. 
     “What’s that ahead?”, panted the lady. “Is that a crowd coming at us?

     Charlie squinted through the rain. “A big crowd.”

     “Do I hear a chopper overhead?”

     “A big chopper.”

     Several dozen people, the young carrying the old and the children were running in a full bore panic right at them. Charlie grabbed the suitcase to him. The umbrella tilted and swerved over the chair. The terror in the people’s eyes terrified them both.

     “What are you running from?”, Charlie yelled.

     “They’ve struck the servile barracks!”, screamed a wild-eyed man. “Bugslplat!”

     A young woman grabbed his arm and shook it. “It’s a cull!”, she gasped. “That Apache has taser cannons!”

     The lady in the wheelchair grabbed at his pants. “Taser cannons! Hunker down, suitcase boy! For God’s sake, hunker down!”

     Charlie dropped to the sidewalk next to the wheelchair, curled up behind it and raised the suitcase over his head. A roaring stuccato blasted from the darkness. A mass of objects flew down on them. The umbrella and the suitcase shook and lit up with white fire. The people running around them froze for an endless horrible second, arms akimbo, old people dropping from their arms, babies flying into the air, a gargling, cackle erupting form their throats as they jerked and twitched in a dance of death under satanic white halos. Then all was silent but for the pounding of the rain.

      The lady in the wheelchair looked at Charlie. “Let’s get the fuck outa here!”

      The wheelchair pulled to a stop on a wall overlooking the harbor. A full moon broke through the clouds and lit up the waterfront. Charlie heard the whine of an engine above them. “Drones! We’re sitting ducks!”

   “If we can get through a taser cannon, we just might get through a bugsplat! Get that suitcase over your head!”

   He noticed a flashing light at the end of a pier lined with yachts.

   “There they are!" she whispered." Come on! They’re waiting for us!” The wheelchair jumped to life and sped toward a towering gate rising over the pier. She raced down an incline toward it, lifted the rifle and blasted away. It flung open as it collapsed around itself.

   They charged along the pier. Sporadic gunfire erupted. Bullets pocked the planks at their feet and splashed in the water. A cloud blew over the moon and all went dark. Charlie ran forward blindly and just managed to keep himself from running into the wheelchair as it was being lowered into a skiff. The cloud cleared the moon revealing angry faces. Knives glinted in the moonlight. “He’s with me! Help him in!”

   Blades disappeared and hands took hold of him as he dropped into the boat. The wheelchair was secured and they pushed off. Charlie sat clutching his suitcase and staring at the four figures pulling at the oars.

   The lady was poised in her chair at the prow of the skiff like a figurehead. "Where are the rest of you? Why aren't more of you manning this skiff?"

   One of the crew grimly shook his head.

   "How many are left?"

   Silence. 
   "How many are manning the ship?"
   "Wally."

   "Wally? Just Wally?" She put a hand to her forehead. No one spoke. Suddenly she looked up. “Heads down, everyone!” The pier exploded.

   They all threw themselves to the bottom of the skiff. Shrapnel whizzed over them and burning debris fell all around. Everyone rushed to throw overboard anything on fire. The lady in the wheelchair, untouched and unfazed barked another order. “Hoist the sail!”

   Charlie did his best to stay out of the way as a mast was raised and a sail unfurled. “Are you sure you want to make us an even bigger target?”, he asked one of them.

   “It reflects the light and covers our heat output. We blend into the water and the infrared scopes can’t pick us up.", was the response. “It’s the same material as Seraphina’s umbrella.”

   “Seraphina?”

   The moon disappeared completely behind a bank of clouds. The wind picked up. The sail snapped open, the oars hit the water and they surged forward. It was so dark now Charlie could hardly see his hands gripping the handle of the suitcase. It stayed dark. No one said a word. It was only the wind in his ears that kept him from panicking. How the hell could these people just sail off into the pitch black? No lights. No stars. No moon. If anyone had a compass, they couldn’t possibly see it. He heard the oars creaking and dipping in unison. He heard the mast groaning as the sail strained on it. He didn’t dare say a word. He lost all track of time. He felt suspended in a dream he couldn’t see. He lowered his head. My God, he thought, I miss my wife. I miss my daughter.

   The moon peeked through the clouds. They swirled around it sculpting it into a skull glaring down at a schooner towering above them.

     A Jacob’s Ladder was thrown down and everyone pulled themselves up to the deck along with bundles of clothes, weapons and a large, heavy sack that could almost pass as a body bag. They motioned to Charlie and he followed. The crew then made haste hauling Seraphina up to the ship. One attended to her and the rest dropped the schooner's sails that immediately caught the wind and pulled it across the waves. The moon had disappeared again and nothing hummed in the sky above them. The sound of the sea parting under the ship’s hull was a comfort. Charlie breathed in the salt air. The squeak of a wheel caught his attention. He turned and looked down at Seraphina. The moon reappeared.

   “So what’s your name?”

   “At the moment, I don’t know.”

   “That’s cool. Mine’s Seraphina.”

   “We’ve had an interesting introduction, Seraphina.”

   “Ain’t it the truth. We’re quite a team.”

   “Thank you for that.”

   Seraphina offered Charlie a dazzling smile then she frowned. “The bastards have started a cull. I know it. They’re capable of anything. Look what they did to me. I wasn’t born this way. I was damn good looking until they got a hold of me and when they did, they didn‘t leave much.  About the only thing I can recognize in the mirror is my face and even that’s a shadow of itself. I - ” Her voice caught in her throat. She looked out to sea. “I sometimes wake up and I’ve completely forgotten that I -” She put her hands to her face. “They knew that I was a musician so they shattered my fingers. It took months to get the use of my hands back. By the time I was well enough to get around in a chair, I decided to get one to make up for what I once was, something real splashy, something real special. I was six feet tall, had the body of a goddess and hair down to my waist. Now I am a crumpled creature, a very angry crumpled creature who finds solace only in her dreams. I have a reoccurring dream where I am a tiny naked fairy riding a tiny beast perched on a windowsill. I look down to a mirror on the table and see my reflection, my beautiful reflection. I reach for it. You see, they didn't shatter my mind. They tried, believe me. They often brought me before the guillotine. Do you know they have guillotines in the prisons just like the Nazis had? They're room size, dungeon size, not the kind the French put up in Paris in their revolution but horrible squat little monsters that glare at you in the darkness, grin at you, wait for you.”

   “How did you get out? How did you survive?”

   "How did any of us survive? We confessed. We gave information. The trick was what information, true or false and if false, believable.  And it depended on who was still on the inside, who was still inside. They could verify your false info. They could provide it for you. There were a few on the inside, enough, and I got out with my life and the lives of others, enough others for me to survive, for my conscience to survive. There isn’t anybody on the inside anymore.”

   Charlie lowered the suitcase to the deck. “My dead wife wakes me every morning.”

   Seraphina shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

   “My dead daughter kisses me on the cheek when I close my eyes at night.”

   “Well,  you’re in good company with this crowd.”

   He sat down on the deck and looked up at Seraphina. “I planned to make contact with the Resistance, but I didn’t expect them to find me.”

   “The Resistance” What are you talking about?”

   He rolled his eyes. “I’m not a spy. I’m not an infiltrator. I’m on the run from Homeland Security just like you. Let’s not waste our time. If you’re not the Resistance, what are you?”

   “We are a collection of survivors. We’re all victims of the state. When that banker met his fate in New York, we knew this would be it. We had a plan to take this ship if things ever got this far and we did. A couple of us knew how to sail. The elites restored her and kept her docked at a pier at the waterfront home of the Sachem of the City of Seattle. That home is no longer there, neither is the Sachem of the City of Seattle.”

   Charlie sighed. “And neither will we come daybreak.”

   The agony in Seraphina’s face had lifted. “We will have made land by daybreak. They won’t find us.”

   He shook his head. “Where, for God’s sake, the South Seas? This is Washington State. This is Seattle.”

   Serpahina offered him a conspiratorial smile. “Puget Sound is a very large place, my friend and I’m tired of not knowing your name. How about Frank?”

   “That’ll work.”

    Seraphina patted his shoulder. “Frank, meet Seraphina. There are cots below. Get a couple hours sleep. We should reach our destination just before light.” She turned the chair and rolled away. “That was one hell of an afternoon, Frank. Sweet dreams.”